Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 23
23
NHSE&I emphasised the flexibility of the NHS workforce, as evidenced throughout the pandemic.
Conclusion
NHSE&I emphasised the flexibility of the NHS workforce, as evidenced throughout the pandemic. It said that this workforce flexibility now needed to continue as part of transforming the NHS for the future and recovering elective and cancer care.51 In written evidence, the Health Foundation told us that serious staff shortages were compounded by the fact that staff were exhausted by their experience of the past 18 months, with the NHS Staff Survey for 2020 showing that 44% of staff reported feeling unwell as a result of work-related stress, the highest result over the past five years.52 This is the situation before the health system begins to feel the full effects of missing cancer and elective patients returning for care. Under a plausible scenario of 50% of missing patients returning and the NHS achieving a 30% increase in activity by 2024–25 compared with pre-pandemic levels, the National Audit Office estimates that the waiting list will be 7 million in March 2025, around one million higher than it was in December 2021.53 As noted by The King’s Fund, national leaders will need to decide which areas to prioritise and be honest with the public about the knock-on effects of the care they can expect to receive.54 48 Q106 49 Q107 50 Q111 51 Q72 52 NHS0044 The Health Foundation submission page 6 53 C&AG’s Report, page 36 and published NHS waiting times statistics 54 NHS0007 King’s Fund submission page 5 16 NHS backlogs and waiting times in England
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
3.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Spring 2023 3.2 Ensuring that the NHS has a workforce in the right numbers and with the right skills to deliver service commitments to patients is crucial. The government is already expanding the size of the workforce, aligning workforce planning with service and financial planning and looking at the long-term strategic drivers of workforce demand and supply. 3.3 Following on from expansion over the last decade, growth of the NHS workforce continues to be a priority for this government, alongside supporting the existing workforce to ensure the NHS meets the rise in demand for health and care services. Ensuring the NHS is well staffed, with colleagues well looked after, is a key focus. An example of this, as demonstrated by the manifesto commitment, is to deliver 50,000 more nurses. 3.4 On longer-term workforce planning, in July 2021 the government commissioned Health Education England to work with partners and review long term strategic trends for the health and regulated social care workforce. This will review and renew the long-term strategic framework for the health workforce, to help ensure the NHS has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to deliver world leading clinical services and continued high standards of patient care. For the first time ever, the framework will also include regulated professionals working in social care, like nurses and occupational therapists. 3.5 Building on this work the department of Health and Social Care has recently commissioned NHS England and Improvement and HEE to develop a Long-Term Workforce Plan and key conclusions from this work will be published in due course.